Lowering the price tag of
access to space is a familiar mantra in launch-for-hire circles. UP Aerospace
Inc. of Farmington, Conn., is focusing its efforts to meet that challenge on
the needs of educational, commercial, government and entrepreneurial customers
who need affordable ways to conduct space experiments.
The workhorse rocket of
UP Aerospace is the SpaceLoft
XL, a 6-meter tall, single-stage, solid-fuel booster designed to launch
multiple small payloads up to 225.3 kilometers above the Earth on a suborbital
trajectory that takes 15 minutes from takeoff to landing.
UP Aerospace is operating
from the first launch pad installed at the fledgling New Mexico Spaceport
America - a sprawling site that is roughly 70 square kilometers of open,
generally level land north of Las Cruces and east of Truth or Consequences.
The SpaceLoft XL is being
flown under Federal Aviation Administration amateur rocketry rules.
While cutting its teeth
on the suborbital market, the start-up company envisions a family of boosters
to loft larger and heavier payloads as it moves toward an orbital capability.
En route to that goal, UP Aerospace is refining a number of approaches - from
payload integration to quick turnaround operations - to help curb the cost of
hurling payloads into space.
"Before we get to an
orbital vehicle, we have plans for larger suborbital vehicles that are bigger
by volume and also weight. We plan to develop those as we move along," said
Jerry Larson, president of UP Aerospace Inc., with its primary business office
in Highlands Ranch, Colo.
Larson said the company
has scripted launch operations plans that would allow it to launch multiple
rockets in a single day. "We've designed from the very beginning to have
launch operations done by as few as three people ... to put vehicles together
quickly on the launch pad and recycle for another flight within a few
hours," Larson said in a May 15 telephone interview with Space News.
The big advantage that UP
Aerospace is striving to bring to the marketplace is a new affordable cost
point, said Eric Knight, co-founder of UP Aerospace and the firm's chief
marketing officer. "We want to bring that same cost thriftiness to orbital
flights," he added, eyeing, in particular, the launch of small, nano- and
pico-sized spacecraft.
"The way we see it,
there's going to be this intersection of more and more capable, smaller and
smaller packages. We're trying to intersect our growth and capabilities with
the maturity of those smaller satellites," Knight told Space News in a May
14 phone interview. "We feel there's an under-served market, but a growing
market there. We want to be at the right place when that market matures."
UP Aerospace is riding
high after its SpaceLoft XL (SL-2) suborbital rocket lifted off from Spaceport America April 28, with an array of educational, scientific and commercial payloads. The
rocket reached some 117.5 kilometers altitude before nosing back to terra
firma.
The payload included more
than 40 scientific experiments designed and developed by 800 students from
teams around the United States and the world, including Alaska, Puerto Rico and
the Netherlands. The University of Colorado at Boulder fabricated another SL-2
payload, in tandem with the NASA Space Grant program. A proof-of-concept
"RocketSat" payload consisted of several experiments including a GPS
receiver and a video camera.
Also on board was
Astrata/RocketFoto, a start-up enterprise that sends personal photos on
round-trip space missions for its customers.
The SL-2 takeoff also
marked the initiation of Legacy Memorial Spaceflight Mission flights, a
business venture of Celestis Inc. of Houston, a group that flies the cremated
remains of individuals into space.
On board the SL-2 were
the ashes of television and movie actor James Doohan, best known as "Star
Trek's" "Scotty" and pioneering NASA Mercury astronaut L.
Gordon Cooper, as well as the ashes of some 200 other individuals from all
walks of life.
Due to a late change in
rocket trajectory and wind pattern, however, the SL-2's rocket body and payload
canister individually parachuted into hard-to-search-terrain within a targeted
zone inside the White Sands Missile Range. Bouts of bad weather over several
weeks hampered helicopter searches for the rocket hardware. Making the search
more frustrating, several tiny transmitters on the payload section had become
detached during descent.
The payload container was
eventually recovered
May 18 - three weeks after launch.
While bolstered by last
month's flight success, UP Aerospace suffered through a mishap when its
SpaceLoft XL failed Sept. 25. That inaugural launch of the suborbital booster
from New Mexico's Spaceport America experienced problems that led to rocket
corkscrewing in the air, then plowing into desert landscape after 90 seconds of
flight and wrecking onboard payloads.
An investigation into the
flight anomaly revealed that an aerodynamic stability margin in the rocket was
too low, and the vehicle was designed incorrectly not to spin fast enough on
ascent. Corrective actions were taken for the return to flight of the SpaceLoft
XL.
"It takes time and
it takes flights to work out the kinks. That's kind of where we are now,"
Larson said. The loss of the first SpaceLoft XL was painful, "but I think
that goes with this type of business."
Larson said development
work on the orbital launcher already has begun.
Components of that future
rocket, such as separation gear, were flown on the SpaceLoft XL to help prove
out subsystems.
Working on launch vehicles
from a "clean slate" offers a better chance of finding and developing
rocket launch solutions that are less expensive, Larson said.
UP Aerospace is using
automated launch procedures, as well as pre-assembly of the rocket at the
factory to minimize on-the-pad preparation. Another feature of their service is
providing payload customers special containers for their experiments so they
can be loaded into the rocket "like batteries in a flashlight,"
Larson said.
As for the lengthy
recovery time for the SL-2 mission, Larson said it's another bump on the road
as UP Aerospace increases its flight rate. "We'll learn from this
experience and make changes appropriately."
Identifying the
suborbital customer base is "a business model that we're inventing as we
go," Knight noted. "We're a transportation service like United Parcel
Service or Federal Express ... that's the closest business model that we have
to work from," he said.
Three to four launches of
the SpaceLoft XL from Spaceport America are possible before year's end, Knight
said. "Next year we're looking to ramp up from that substantially ... but
also in a measured way."
Dan Hanle, chief
executive officer for UP Aerospace, sees UP Aerospace as a very scaleable
business - which is the intent of the launch provider as it modularizes,
standardizes and customizes its operations. Further improvements in payload
handling, launch and recovery abilities filter into reductions in fixed costs,
he explained to Space News in a May 18 phone interview.
"So our fixed cost
could go down while we are scaling up the business," Hanle observed.
"Our experience curve is going to be quick. We won't have to fire a
hundred rockets to come down that curve, by my estimation. Five or six rounds
and we'll probably have zoomed in on minimum essentials ... and have improved
that part of our business model as well."
